A television programme is out to test whether innocent people can be brainwashed in becoming unwitting assassins as in the plot of political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.

A Discovery Channel documentary aims to see if it is indeed possible to persuade unwitting, law-abiding subjects to become cold-blooded killers who will shoot someone to order,Today’s Clicker blog reports.

Experimental psychopathologist Cynthia Meyerburg, who oversaw the study, says in a trailer for the documentary: ‘Science has only begun to understand how the brain works, and one of the things we don’t yet understand is whether it’s possible to control someone else’s mind.’

The programme will show work with a group of test subjects who gave their consent to take part in a hypnosis study for television.